The Tenth Planet

The TARDIS arrives at a high security space tracking station in the Antarctic in 1986. The visit by the Doctor, Polly and Ben comes at the same time as a new planet appears in the solar system, putting a manned space flight in orbit over Earth in danger. As the planet approaches an energy drain begins to affect Earth, and the Doctor surmises that the new planet is pulling power away to replenish itself. But the new planet is not uninhabited and its inhabitants soon come to Earth as well to secure the planet for their plunder; they were once humans but as their bodies began to fail in the harsh conditions on their planet, Mondas, they began to replace their organs and limbs with mechanical substitutes to the point where there is nothing human left, not even emotions. The Cybermen have arrived.

Visually the Cybermen did not have the best start in the series; they looked tremendously top heavy and ungainly with the headset lamp they wore and the massive amount of tech planted on their chests, and their faces were not concealed by the same metal helmet as today but rather a fabric stocking pulled tight. The whole effect, though, is not ineffective; these are the earliest Cybermen ever made and they were created with all the resource the failing planet had left. The fact that their hands are still visible as well makes for some macabre imagery as if the hands were cut off and then reattached to the metal body, or the flesh and bones between the hands and shoulders all scraped away and replaced with hydraulics. And those faces... the eyes of the actors still stare out from behind mesh but I don't think I ever saw one of them blink, and when they speak that dreadful canny voice issuing from a mouth that opens in a parody of speech but does not actually form words... these have to be some of the most horrific things ever made in Doctor Who.

The brilliance of the creation of the Cybermen demands a proper intro story and The Tenth Planet is exactly that. This one stands out for its attention to detail on so many levels starting with the effective set design of the Snowcap Tracking Station with its multi leveled setup and the sheer amount of prop technology packed into it. The series is long criticized for the sets looking wobbly like cardboard but the tracking room set has none of that fabled flimsiness about it at all. This one also has an international feel to the casting, with nationalities of all kinds included in the base personnel, the staff of the UN headquarters in Geneva and even the doomed orbiting Zeus 4 capsule. (And note how the space suit worn by one of the astronauts there is the same one as worn by Bossk in The Empire Strikes Back). It's a sad counterpoint to this progressive casting that William Hartnell has been accused of having been very old school conservative in his views of other nationalities and on this, his last serial as the starring character, he would be quite vocal about it. Anneke Wills, who played Polly, is on record as saying she and her co star Michael Craze (Ben Jackson) were ashamed for Hartnell's behaviour around this subject, considering that the character he played was so far from being that kind of a person.

And while The Tenth Planet introduces what will become one of the most famous monsters in the series, it also has to introduce the concept which will keep the series going into the future: the concept of regeneration. The Doctor's body has been failing ever since his experience in The Savages - even if this is not directly mentioned in the series it is certainly the most physically traumatic thing to happen to him and his manner has become far more erratic ever since, something which has been picked up on by the contributing authors of the novel and audio series which have been placed between that adventure and this one. By the end of the story, with the Cybermen defeated, the Doctor is in a daze and nearly locks Ben and Polly out of the TARDIS, but as they get inside he collapses on the floor and as his companions watch, his face changes into someone completely new. It was a tremendous gamble to do this to keep the series going, and it had been toyed with before as a means to remove William Hartnell from the series when it became obvious his own health was not going to improve. Audiences watching the episode for the first time would have to wait a week to see what all this was going
to mean for the show, and I can only imagine what kind of conversations fans were having the morning after seeing this. And all without an internet forum!

The famous first regeneration clip is pretty much all that still exists of episode 4 of this adventure; episodes 1 through 3 did not see commercial release for the longest time as BBC Video wasn't sure if an incomplete story would sell and when they did finally put it on VHS the last episode was cobbled together with stills and the original episode soundtrack, and clips where they could be added in. When the DVD was released it was done with an animated version of episode 4 so finally the whole thing could be watched properly, much akin to the DVD release of The Reign of Terror and several others which lay ahead.

Having survived the invasion by the Cybermen, though, Ben and Polly are now left to cope with the Doctor's sudden change. Who will he be now?

NEXT EPISODE: THE POWER OF THE DALEKS